Sharper Image

[orourke]

<p>Hello all. Awhile back I had asked if there were free programs that would allow me to edit/resisize/yada/yada/yada. Several people here suggested Fastone and Gimp, among others. I tried to download GIMP back then and for some reason, it didn't take. Faststone, on the other hand, loaded fine and I've been playing around with that program since. It seems pretty straightforward and does most of what I have wanted to do up until this point. That may be changing.</p>

<p>Currently I am still in film mode, not having purchased a DSLR yet. (Soon though) Lately I've been playing around with old negs I shot years ago, some of which I've probably been cropping beyond my ability to work with the image any further in Faststone to achieve a more pleasing (to me) result. One such image is a shot I took in 1980 of President Carter during is final days. I cropped the image to highlight the toll those difficult years had on his face.</p>

<p>I like the grain in the image but I was curious if there was anything I may be able to do to sharpen it a bit more. Is there something in Fastone beyond contrast/highlights/shadow/level adjustments that will help? I"ve also noticed what appears to be a shapening filter (the name escapes me at the moment) which I believe I have set to the sharpest setting.<br>

Should I retry downloading GIMP, is there an advantage, or are there other options you could recommend? Thanks in advance. Now, I'll try to insert the image. I'm not sure if this thread works the same as the Nikon Wednesday thread so bear with me if it doesn't appear right away. Thanks again.</p><div></div>

[jcuknz]

<p>You could download the free Paint.Net and the following has been sharpened about half way along the scale of possible sharpening in that programme ... looks horribly gritty to me. I hope it is your photo and not somebody else's.</p><div></div>

[orourke]

<p>Thanks JC. Yes, it's my image so I can screw it up to my heart's content. I just downloaded paint.net and played with it for about a half hour. That is a whole new bag of marbles for me so it will take some getting used to. I may start from scratch with this image (before the crop) tomorrow and see where that leads me. I really appreciate the advice, thank you again.</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>I'm always a sucker for challenges like this. Unfortunately, I could get only a tiny more detail out of your image before increasing artifacts (eg, a cheek that looks more like parchment than skin, dark halos, etc.) became unacceptable, even though I used the best algorithms in my toolkit:</p>

<p>Ximagic for noise reduction - http://www.ximagic.com/d_index.html</p>

<p>Focus magic for kernel-based high spatial frequency sharpening - http://www.focusmagic.com/ , and,</p>

<p>Topaz Detail for increasing contrast at low and mid spatial frequencies while slightly decreasing contrast at high spatial frequencies - http://www.topazlabs.com/detail/</p>

<p>Basically, IMHO, you did about as good a job on the image as seems to be possible, and the benefits of the three extra processing steps that I used weren't worth the time spent.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Of course, if you want to cross the line into out-and-out retouching, almost anything is possible. Whether it's appropriate or not for a quasi-documentary photo is another question. :-(</p>

<p>For example ...</p><div></div>

[orourke]

<p>Thanks Tom. I haven't had a chance to sit down and rework the image from scratch yet, but I have played around with some meaningless photos just to get the feel for paint. It seems, at least so far, that there are features in both paint and fastone that are pretty much the same or close, and some that are not. I found myself going back to fastone for the clone tool, and I also have not run across any feature in paint that levels the horizon. Am I missing it somewhere?<br>

Anyway, thanks again. Now I get a chance to spend some (ha ha ) free time getting a feel for the new editing program. ;)</p>

[orourke]

<p>I suppose I do have an addendum to my question. Is there a way, given the programs I am using to selectively sharpen a part of the image, for example the eyes? Is that an option in other programs?<br>

Curious</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Hi Bill - Unfortunately, I don't know anything at all about the two programs you use, but, in Photoshop, one of the main features of the program is the ability to select certain parts of an image and then do almost anything you want to the parts you have selected (eg, turn them into B&W, sharpen, blur, change brightness / contrast, replace with other content, etc.) . </p>

<p>In PS, a selection can be made by many wildly different means, eg, (a) defining the edges of the ROI (region of interest) manually (several methods for this), (b) defining the boundaries of the ROI semi-automatically (eg, click and find similar pixels), (b) selecting by hue, © selecting by tonality (eg, selecting only the mid tones), (d) combining other selections with Boolean operators (eg, add to a selection, subtract one selection from another, select only those pixels in both of the previous selections, etc. etc.). The above list is far from complete, but hopefully it will give you an idea of the sorts of things that can be done in PS.</p>

<p>Of course, sharpening one part of an image (eg, only the eyes) is subject to the same limitations as sharpening the entire image ( e.g., bring out noise, dark and light halos around sharp edges, making that one part look very different than the rest of the image, etc. ). </p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

<p> </p>